162 Wnlfliall and the Seymours. 



may add this to our list of little u fragments recovered from the 

 shipwreck of time." 



After her first committal, Lady Arabella was, for a time, removed 

 to private custody, but, on being sent back to the Tower, her mind 

 began to give way, and in a few years she died there of grief in 1615. 

 There are two fine portraits of her at Longleat, and twenty-eight of 

 her letters addressed to Lord Robert Cecil, and her uncle and aunt, I 

 the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury. 1 



William Seymour was allowed to remain abroad. A letter written 

 to him by his grandfather, the Earl of Hertford, which appears to 

 be new, will be found in the Appendix (No. xxii). 



I have only a few more words to say. After Lady Arabella's 

 death, William, Marquis of Hertford, married Lady Frances 

 Devereux, sister and co-heir of the Earl of Essex. He was restored 

 to the Dukedom of Somerset, and died in 1660. The Duchess (of 

 whom there is a fine marble bust in Great Bedwyn Church) survived 

 her husband, and continued to live at Tottenham Park till her death 

 in 1674. 



Robert Lord Beauchamp, then her eldest surviving son, died in 

 France, but his body was brought over and interred at Great Bedwyn , 

 January, 1646. The warrant for his corpse to pass was signed by 

 King Charles I. {Appendix } No. xxiii.) 



1 These letters (with many others of the period, now bound in two quarto 

 volumes) appear to have been a portion of the celebrated " Talbot Papers," 

 which were dispersed on the dismantling of Sheffield Castle (the Earl of Shrews- 

 bury's) : the history of which affair, so far as then known, is given in a note to 

 Hunter's Hallamshire, p. 49, Edit. 181 9. They came into the possession of the 

 first Lord "Weymouth, who died in 1714. They were seen at Longleat, and 

 copied by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum, about 1754, and his copies are 

 now preserved there in " Sloane MS,, 4164." After that time they were probably 

 put away (as often happens) in some very safe place, to be again accidentally 

 brought to light by an inquisitive posterity, for in the u Curiosities of Literature," 

 (Mr. I. Disraeli, 2nd Ser., i., 268, 8vo., 1824,) it is mentioned in a note that 

 the existence at Longleat of certain papers relating to Lady Arabella was on 

 record: and Miss Costello (Lives of Eminent Englishwomen, I., 322) says, that 

 though she visited the house and was allowed to search, she could not find or 

 hear of them. They are, however, perfectly safe and in excellent preservation ; 

 and were in 1866 printed in Miss E. Cooper's Life of Lady Arabella ; not how- 

 ever from the originals, but from Dr. Birch's not quits accurate copies. 



